


you're the dream i had just before i woke up

by jokeperalta



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: 'cept its not actually fake, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Implied Sexual Content, Mentions of past abuse, Parenthood, Pregnancy, giving endeavour morse and joan thursday happy endings, one shitty fic at a time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 16:48:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10723320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jokeperalta/pseuds/jokeperalta
Summary: AU in which Joan accepts Morse's proposal.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> for the sake of this fic, Thursday did not go to Leamington Spa to see Joan. i honestly did try to incorporate that plot point but it just wasn't fitting with the story i wanted to tell. everything pre-proposal is the same!

 

Things happen very quickly after that night.

Her parents are delighted, of course. Shocked, but delighted. Her mother wells up with tears and her father shakes Morse’s hand so hard Joan thinks he might just shake it out of joint.

It unsettles her how easy it turns out to be, lying to her parents about something so fundamental. They accept their pre-prepared story of secret whirlwind romance while she'd been away, all of it, without so much as a suspicious look.

She puts it down to Morse. For a man who seems so square and upstanding, she finds he can be a hell of a liar when he wants to be. She lets him do most of the talking, adding only a few embellishments of her own to drive the point home: _they’re deeply in love and they're getting married and they'd like Joan’s parents blessing_.

He’s even perfected all the little gestures that Joan hadn't even thought of: a loose arm around her waist, a hand on her knee whilst they sit on the couch. Each time it takes her just a second too long to react appropriately because she isn't used to him like this—she can't even remember a time he even entered her personal space without bank robbers holding guns to their heads.

And that's nothing compared to how he looks at her. It's small wonder her parents are convinced. He almost has her believing he's in love with her.

Joan had been concerned about her father, especially, seeing through the ruse. Realising something wasn't adding up. But if anything he's even more taken in than her mother is. Joan thinks maybe he just doesn't want to look too closely, to question what’s worked out so wonderfully. Morse is making all her father’s dreams come true in one fell swoop, after all—getting her to move back to Oxford and settle down. No more suitors to disapprove of because Joan’s only gone and picked his ideal son-in-law anyway.

In the end, all her mother tuts over -with a laugh- is the lack of a ring on her finger.

“I know, I know,” Morse says, smiling apologetically. “I’m working on it.”

 

 

/

 

She tells her mother about the baby separately, when they’re both in the kitchen washing the cups and plates.

“Well, that explains your rush to get married, I suppose. I was wondering about that,” her mother sighs. She stops for a minute to give Joan a mildly disapproving look. “You might have waited till after the wedding for all that, dear.”

Joan averts her eyes and flushes red. Sex was never so much a topic in their house growing up as a carefully side-stepped area marked _DANGER_ in big red letters. Being told off like a child for having it by her mother, even in so few words, is mortifying.

Her mother shrugs. “Still, if it's anyone I’m glad it's Morse. He's a good man, and he's doing the proper thing by you.”

There's really nothing Joan can say to that. She thinks of how this might have gone with Ray, if he'd even ever entertained the idea of leaving his wife to be with her. They wouldn't be marrying, that's for sure. He'd ruled it out with her, having done ‘all that bollocks’ with his wife and hated every second.

Her father would have hated him on sight and made no secret of it. Her mother would have outright despised him, but nobody would ever know it because she'd try to make the best of it.

As it is, her mother suddenly takes her soapy hands and squeezes them tight. “Goodness, Joan… I’m going to be a grandmother!”

Joan can't help but smile. At least she's making her mother happy. “You are,” she confirms. “Look, would you- would you tell dad for me? After me and Morse leave? I think it’ll be better if it comes from you.”

Joan isn't sure she believes in what she's saying herself, but she does know she doesn't want to put Morse through another round of her parents and their intense interest in every aspect of their ‘relationship’. If she's tired already, he must be exhausted—and he's only doing it to save her skin.

(And if she thinks too hard about that, the guilt of it all gets overwhelming.)

“I’m sure he'd rather hear it from you, Joan,” her mother chides. Joan must look more desperate than she realises, because her mother concedes a moment later. “But I can tell him, if that's what you really want.”

“Thank you, mum.”

“But only because you’ve given me an excuse to use some of my baby knitting patterns at last.”

 

 

/

 

 

Joan thought it was just a way to put her mother off, but sure enough, he slides an antique ring box across the pub table to her a few days later.

She looks at it, her breath catching, then at him. He doesn't look at her though, shrugging and scratching the back of his neck.

“I had my sister courier it to me,” he says. “You don't have to wear it if you don't like it. I just thought—because people are going to keep asking why you don't have one.”

Joan lifts the lid. It's a substantial round diamond set in gold with fine small diamonds on each side of the band. It's the kind of jewellery she'd be afraid to even touch for fear leaving her grubby fingerprints on the gold. And now he's giving it to her.

“It's beautiful,” she breathes. “Whose is it?”

“My mother’s. Or, it was.”

The lump in her throat is almost an old friend by now, because it's the one she gets whenever she thinks about what he's doing for her and how little she deserves it.

The question is on the tip of her tongue again: _are you sure you want to do this?_ She might have asked a hundred times since they agreed to this but Joan doesn't know if she'll ever be convinced of the answer he keeps giving her.

Not when he's giving her his mother’s engagement ring like it's nothing. Like there isn't some girl much more deserving than herself, waiting in his future that he’ll want to give it to but won't be able to because he's chained himself to her.

On the other hand, one day she might ask and he’ll come to his senses and run for the hills. And she’ll be left alone and (quite literally, in about eight months time) holding the baby. It's gotten to the point where she's relying on him too much, she wants him around too much, to ask again. To tempt fate.

She's selfish enough to keep her mouth shut.

Joan gingerly pulls the ring from the velvet cushion between her thumb and forefinger. She's unsure how to handle it; only her mother’s jewellery is so fine and she was never permitted to touch that until she proved herself sensible. The ring seems more precious in both worth and sentimental value than she’ll ever be responsible enough for.

She's about to try it on when he takes it out her hands.

“That's my job, isn't it?” he says, half smiling.

Joan doesn't point out how little any of what they're doing subscribes to any kind of convention. She huffs a laugh and shrugs, holding out her left hand to him.

He takes it -very gently, as though he's expecting her to snatch it back at any moment- and slides the ring onto her finger.

It fits.

“Perfect,” she murmurs.

“Yeah,” he agrees.

Joan almost catches something in his eyes when she glances up, some deeply held emotion swirling there that she can't parse. But he blinks, and it's gone the next moment.

 

 

/

 

 

Before she knows it, she's being zipped into a frothy white dress in the front room of her childhood house.

She's had a thousand or more fittings but if the wedding had been a week later she's sure her boobs would have split the seams. It's a struggle as it is, getting her old clothes to fit, and she isn't even really showing yet.

Her mother starts crying when she helps Joan put on the veil (the same she wore on her wedding day to Joan’s father and Joan’s something borrowed) and from there, the waterworks barely stop all day. Joan laughs and hugs her for a good few minutes, until the car horn blares from outside.

Even her father has lost his characteristic stoicism when she steps out the car outside the church.

“You’ll do, Joanie,” he tells her in a wobbly voice, using a nickname she hasn't heard in years. “You’ll do.”

Joan smiles, as uncomfortable with the emotion of the situation as he is. “Thanks, Dad.”

Her mother kisses her cheeks and hugs her once more. “Well, we can't stand out here gabbing all day—Morse is waiting for you!”

 _Morse_. Joan swallows. A wave of reality hits her with the mention of his name.

Her husband to be. She’ll be Mrs Morse in just over an hour’s time. Who’d have thought, that first morning he stood on her doorstep, that they'd end up here?

“Come on then, my girl,” her father says to her but his voice sounds faraway. He pulls her arm through his and she's grateful for the anchoring. “We’ve got a wedding to go to.”

The wedding march starts outside the doors to the nave. It's the church she attended every week as a kid yet for all that seems familiar right now, her father might as well have been leading her onto another planet.

Dozens of pairs of eyes turn to her as soon as the doors open. They're mostly made up of her own relatives smiling at her and still she can't seem to put names to any of them. Joan feels herself sweating under the cake of make up she's wearing.

It might be an act of God that the pair of eyes she sees next –on the verge of the vomiting type of nausea she's become so au fait with recently- are Morse’s. He's the only thing in her line of sight that seems real and recognisable, something to hang onto other than the death grip she has on her father's arm.

Her father puts her clammy hand in Morse’s at the end of the endless aisle. Morse gives her the exact same dazed _how the hell did we get here_ look as she's feeling and it makes her laugh out loud -an unladylike snort- relaxing for the first time all day. What a pair they make.

 

 

/

 

 

Their first kiss is in front of her mother, father, brother (on leave from the army especially for the special occasion) and a rapt audience of policemen and relatives. She thinks about it for the first time while she stands there and the vicar proclaims them man and wife. Perhaps the kiss is something they should have ‘practiced’ before now, but she also has no idea of how she might have broached the subject with Morse without sounding ridiculous.

When the moment comes, Joan feels like a girl again just before her first kiss. A year or two ago she thought of this every time she saw him, and more besides. She thought she knew then what exactly kind of kisser he’d be.

But now, standing in front of him with the weight of expectant eyes, she has no idea.

When she doesn’t move, staring wide-eyed and half-afraid, Morse takes the initiative. He steps into her space, reaches up both hands to cup her jaw like she’s something made of fine porcelain. He leans in and presses her lips with his.

Joan stands on her tiptoes to meet him there. The kiss is as gentle as his hands and over too quickly. He pulls back and searches her eyes from just an a few inches away. She couldn’t look away if she wanted to.

She doesn’t know what he’s looking for, or if he finds it, when the claps and cheers of their audience tears his gaze away.

 

/

 

 

The reception passes in a stressful, surreal blur. Her feet ache in the white satin heels under her skirts while she plays the good bride and circulates around relatives she barely knows, making the same small talk conversations over and over.

The ironic thing is that she barely sees Morse, apart from the cake cutting and the first dance. Despite her best efforts to find her way back to him in spare moments, it seems like there's always someone wanting to claim her attention.

"Your relatives are very... enthusiastic,” he says to her after she collapses in the chair next to him at the top table.

Joan rolls her eyes, leaning forward heavily on the table. “You don't have to be nice, Morse. I know they're terrible.”

“I wouldn't go that far,” he says. “I met your great Aunt Agnes just now and I, for one, loved hearing about her fencing dispute with her neighbour.”

“Well, now you're just being sarky,” Joan says, grinning. “I can tell, you know!”

Morse smiles back, a rare full smile that lightens her mood considerably. But she isn't allowed to enjoy it for long; her mother catches her eye from the other side of the room, standing with a waving elderly man and beckoning her over. "God, does it ever end!?" she moans. She drops her forehead to his shoulder, breathing in deeply in an attempt to fortify herself.

He pushes her hair back, his hand coming to rest on the side of her neck. In the back of her mind it occurs to her that it doesn't even feel like the gesture is for their audience.

“A few more hours, that's all,” he says to her. “If you're with anyone for more than two minutes now, I’ll come and rescue you with a story of buffet disaster or something.”

The champagne she's been drinking all evening make her bold enough to carry the moment on. Joan lifts her chin to his shoulder.

“Do you promise?”

“Promise.”

Joan stays there, watching his eyelashes flutter as he blinks. He's kind of beautiful; she's always thought so but it strikes her anew right now. The strange greeny-blue of his eyes on hers, really seeing her, was always an addictive feeling.

In that respect at least, nothing's changed from when she was 'Miss Thursday' and answering the door to him in the mornings.

The sound of the party going on around them rushes back in and Joan remembers herself. They’re not that couple, the blissful newly-weds who touch that kind of way. He’s only doing this to get her out of trouble. It’s unfair to him to pretend otherwise.

“Better go and schmooze, I suppose,” she says.

Edging out from the table is a tricky business in a dress and heels that practically demand she be perpetually falling over them but she gets there eventually.  When she does though, she finds herself pulled into a tight embrace by a dark-haired woman she doesn't recognise. Joan pats her on the back after a moment, returning the hug uncertainly.

“It's so nice to meet you!” the woman tells her, mostly into her hair. Joan’s searching through a mental list of family friends or relatives for this woman and comes up blank, although that's not especially surprising. She does have a lot of them, as she's learning tonight. Her mother was primarily in charge of the guest list and it's showing.

The woman pulls back, smiling brightly and talking a million miles an hour. “I’m so sorry I couldn't make it till now, I wanted to make it to the ceremony –you look so beautiful by the way- and I begged and pleaded to get a day off work but they just wouldn't budge! I got here as soon as I could!”

“Don't… worry about it!” Joan finds herself saying for lack of anything else.

Joan's half-glad to be saved from the impending awkwardness when the woman spots something behind her. “Endeavour!”

Morse and the woman embrace happily. Joan shouldn't be that surprised considering it's their –not just her- wedding party. She'd assumed woman was a guest on her side only because Morse hadn't invited many—only really some friends from the station who her father probably would have invited anyway and a handful of college friends who mostly hadn't made it.

“Look at you!” the woman says. She straightens his tie and brushes her hands over his lapels. Morse ducks her hands playfully. “I’m so happy for you!”

“I’m glad you made it,” Morse tells her. He pulls her into another hug. “Thank you for coming, Joyce.”

“I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”

Morse notices Joan watching them. “This is my sister, Joyce—Joyce, this is my… this is Joan.”

Joan takes an involuntary step back. Panic seeps through her and clenches her chest uncomfortably. She had known Joyce Morse was invited of course, but she'd hardly had time to consider actually meeting her.

“God, I didn't even introduce myself—no wonder you looked scared!” Joyce laughs warmly.

Joan attempts a smile. "It's great to meet you, Joyce. Thank you for coming.”

“Not at all,” Joyce says. She looks between Morse and Joan, then steps forward to take both of Joan's hands in hers. “I wanted to thank you, Joan. For taking this lummocks of a brother off my hands-” she glances affectionately at Morse “-but really, I’m so glad he found someone who makes him so happy.”

“Joyce,” Morse sighs.

"Look, I’m embarrassing him now,” Joyce says to her with a conspiratorial grin. She's so warm and friendly it somehow makes Joan feel worse. The urge to run she's been fighting all day returns full force. “I’ll stop, honestly. What I’m trying to say is…. Welcome to the family.”

“Thank you,” Joan says. She uses her last vestige of energy to force an excuse out of her. “Joyce… would you excuse me for just a second? I’ve drunk so much champagne with no food this evening that the little girls room is my second home tonight.”

Joyce laughs. “Of course!”

"Please, enjoy the party," Joan tells her, already half striding away.

She wills herself to stay calm, ignoring the calls of her mother and brushing off attempts to engage her in conversation.

 

/

 

Every part of her is tired. Her feet ache and her head throbs.

There's a bathroom at the back of the Royal Legion that's far enough from the main room that it's unoccupied and Joan finds a stall to lock herself into, sitting down on the toilet seat. Joan kicks her pinching shoes off with her heels and pulls her legs up in her skirts, wrapping her arms around her knees.

She left Oxford to try and stop ruining good people's lives. So much for that.

Putting on the pretence for her own family is one thing; something she's had almost four months to come to terms with.

Pretending to his sister, the only family Morse has left, that she hasn't trapped him into marrying her out of pity is something else. And more than that, letting his sister believe she's giving Morse something she's not, something she's not sure she even has left to give anymore.

It feels like one of the worst things she's ever done.

Joan hears the door of the toilets open.

“Joan?” It is, of course, the voice she most and least wants to hear right now. Somehow she isn't even surprised. It's always him.

“At least marrying me has gotten you to call me by my first name at last,” Joan says. “I’ve only been telling you to since we met.”

She can see his shiny shoes under the door of the stall. “Well… you’re not Miss Thursday anymore.”

 _Mrs Joan Morse_ , she thinks. It doesn't sound like her, although it's her legal name now. Mrs Joan Morse sounds… responsible. Sensible. Mrs Joan Morse wouldn't hide in grubby toilets on her wedding day. Mrs Joan Morse would go back out there and converse happily and charm everyone with her poise. Make everyone marvel at how together her life is, and what a glowing bride she is.

"No… I don't suppose I am,” Joan murmurs. He shuffles outside the door, uncertain. “This is a ladies’ bathroom, you know.”

“I came to see if you were all right.”

"Why wouldn't I be?”

“That's not an answer,” he replies gently. When she doesn't say anything else, she hears him sigh. Joan thinks he's going to leave but instead he sits on the floor outside the door. “I’m sorry if Joyce was a bit… intense with you.”

“No, no. She's lovely.”

“She worries about me. She's just happy to see me _settled_ or whatever, that's all it is. I think she was concerned I never would after… -well, she's just glad she lived long enough to see it, I suppose.”

“I get it. I’m fine, really.” A decidedly unconvinced silence follows. “I’m just tired. I feel like I’ve been on my feet all day and my family are batty and I haven't eaten. I just need a few minutes to compose myself. I’m okay.”

“If you're sure.” He sounds unhappy. He's just humouring her and they both know it.

"I am,” she says. “… Thank you, Morse.”

“You don't need to thank me. What kind of husband would I be if didn't come and check on you?” he quips.

“I’m not- really talking about that.” He doesn't say anything. Joan leans her head against the vinyl wall. “Thank you for all of this, and everything else. I don't- I don't deserve it.”

Nothing moves for what feels like an age. She can hear the muffled music of the main room as though it's a different world. It feels like it.

The stillness is broken when Morse gets to his feet. A pair of comfortable looking ladies mules are pushed under the door to her stall. “Joyce wore these to travel here before changing into heels, I thought you might want to borrow them for the rest of the night and Joyce doesn't mind. I know your feet hurt from yours.”

He’s so thoughtful it makes her heart ache. Joan stares at the shoes for a long time after he leaves, before her head drops behind her knees.

There are teary mascara stains on her pure white skirt when she looks up again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahhhh- things will get better in part two! well, tell a lie. things will get slightly worse, and then they'll get better. 
> 
> please comment :-) thanks for reading
> 
> EDIT 28/06: sorry sorry sorry! i absolutely intended to have part 2 up long ago but then final year of uni kicked my ass, spat in my face, and sold my inspiration for a can of baked beans. BUT i am actively working on p2 right now and i just went back and edited a few things in this part (mainly took out unnecessary description because present me can see what past me could not: that some things do not need to be explained to within an inch of their lives)
> 
> progress is being made!


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *nervous jazz hands* hi guys!
> 
> I know it's been a while. I can only apologise profusely and say I also really believed I'd have this up way before now but the road to hell, right? And until about, say, 3am last night, I was intent on powering through to the very end of the story before posting anything. But then I realised I was fast approaching 6k word count and it was getting too unwieldy even for its creator. So I chopped what I was writing in two and there will be one more part after this to resolve and wrap everything up. I'm about 3/4 done with said part but for me that means little in terms of when it will be posted, as the last five months demonstrates. But it is being actively worked on, I promise!

“You know, I think I could get used to this,” Joan comments. Soft cream carpet fills the gaps between her toes while she pads around the honeymoon suite.

By the time they had stepped off the train in Brighton, the sun shined in the early afternoon sky and whatever it is that had been tearing at her insides seems to lift just enough to allow herself to enjoy spending time with him.

And actually, it’s one of the best days she can remember having: spent walking along the coast and pier in the warmth of the sun, her arm in the crook of his. Morse got ice cream on his nose that Joan wiped off with her thumb and it even felt normal. Like they could really be what an outsider would observe: two ordinary newlyweds enjoying the scenery and each other.

It had been late evening by the time Joan suggested they head back to their hotel. She's tired -but for once, in a good way- when she falls back on the soft bed. The muscles in her cheeks still feel the real smiles they've been forming all day. She’s content. It’s a nice feeling.

Morse is poking around with something on the other side of the room. She hears him and senses his movements but it doesn't occur to her to look up to see what until she feels herself starting to drift off.

“What are you doing?”

Morse stops what he’s doing, standing at the couch at the end of the room laying a blanket from one of the cupboards on top of it. “I just- I didn’t want to-” he scratches the back of his neck “-assume.”

It takes her a moment to fathom what he means.

She sits up on one elbow and makes a frustrated noise. This is one of those times where it’s like he still sees her as the daughter of his boss, not an adult woman who’s been through as much as he knows she has, and who he married not two days ago.

“Morse,” she sighs. “You’re married to me. We’re going to have to sleep in the same bed one day. We might as well start as we mean to go on.”

She expects her words to grant him the permission he needs to be within a bed’s width of her, but nothing happens. The way he dithers there reads to her like plain old reluctance and it stings.

 _Repulsive,_ Ray says in her ear, whiskey on his breath, her chin tight in his hand. He’d sobered up and apologised profusely, bought her a new dress and taken her out to dinner the next evening. He turned those eyes on her and she forgave him, but nothing he did took the word out of her mind, the venom in it.

Morse isn’t him and this isn't that time, but once the association’s formed, the damage is done. Shine taken off her good day.

Joan drops back down into the pillows, crawling under the sheets. “Or not, whatever,” she mumbles bitterly.

“No, you’re right,” Morse says quietly, closer now. She hadn’t really intended him to hear. The bed sinks down beside her. “Good night, Joan.”

She doesn’t answer, instead lets him fall asleep behind her before she turns over.

His hand lies between them on the fluffy pillows, fingers loosely curled skyward. She ought to be more grateful he’s here at all, instead of throwing mini tantrums about sleeping arrangements.

Joan rests her hand on top of his, trying to fit them together without disturbing him. He stirs; for a scary, hopeful second, she’s sure he’s going to wake and find their hands clasped.

He doesn’t. He breathes in and turns over in his sleep, and their hands fall apart with it.

 

 

 ----

 

 

Her belly seems to pop overnight on their honeymoon and after that, it doesn’t stop.  By the time they get back to Oxford, Joan looks vaguely like she’s successfully smuggled a bowl of not insubstantial size out from their hotel under her dress, much to her dismay. Her toes slowly disappear beyond the horizon of her expanding body and it starts to feel much like she’s waddling around Morse’s flat trying to make herself at home there. Still, she supposes both are temporary.

If her parents have anything to do with it, they’ll be in their own house sooner rather than later because Morse’s one bed on a busy road is apparently no place to raise a child. Morse tells her he doesn’t mind and Joan has no strong feelings for the flat.

House-hunting with her mother is one of the only things she has to do during the day now anyway. Even if it weren’t for her missing out on her old friends lives for so long, now she’s a married pregnant woman who’s constantly tired and they’re still ready to go dancing all night and flirt with boys—the gulf between them couldn’t be wider and it just makes her feel lonelier. In the end, she stops trying to reconnect and they don’t really seem to miss her.

Instead she goes out during the day on her own, to the park or the shops, and potters around Morse’s flat.

The strangest part of this new arrangement is always at night in his bed with him while he reads before he sleeps, like always. And it is his bed, not theirs. She never feels quite comfortable there, like she’s a house guest that’s long since outstayed their welcome.

All her normal bed time rituals become awkward too, when he’s just sitting there. She’d think nothing of it anywhere else but here, it’s awkward to pull her night shirt up too far to smooth her usual lotion into the newly formed stretch marks on her belly and hips—  the inherent intimacy of the action of baring her skin in his bed that she doesn’t feel entitled to.

The ever-growing elephant in her uterus hardly helps either.

“Ah!” Joan winces, mostly in surprise. She regrets the vocalisation immediately. Morse glances sideways at her. She explains: “It’s- the baby.”

He looks at her seriously now, putting his book down. He’s clearly ready to jump out of bed and ring for help at the slightest worried word from her and it surprises her. They don’t tend to talk about the baby in so many words except for the benefit of her parents. He’s never brought it up directly, and she’s felt too scared to. Like reminding him of the bundle of grave responsibility on the way would make it too terrifyingly real for him.

“Is everything all right?” he says

“Yes… it just kicked. That’s all.”

Maybe to express annoyance at being talked about, the baby prods her insides again. It’s been moving about in there since she hit three months gone, but never so brazenly.

“Oh,” he says.

Morse picks up his book from his lap again, but he doesn’t look at the pages. The moment hangs there, demanding to be recognised but both of them too uncomfortable to do so.

Fuck, she thinks. She and Morse are supposed to be parenting this baby together in three months time and she can’t even name it for what it is when they’re alone.

In a fit of bravery, she takes the wrist nearest to her and pulls it over, laying his hand on her stomach. She holds his palm there, half expecting him to snatch it back in disgust.

He doesn’t, so she presses it more firmly into her skin.

“Wait for it,” she says.

And like a call and response, the baby kicks his hand twice in a row.

Morse laughs out loud, stunned. “That’s…”

“Yeah,” Joan agrees, smiling. “Strange, isn’t it? Imagine having that from the inside out.”

Morse shakes his head. He starts: “I think-”

“What?”

He grins. “We have a tap dancer on our hands.”

Her surprise blocks the words from her own comprehension. In the next instant, the flooding feeling of delight and relief so potent she ends up snorting with laughter. Her hand braces on the edge of the mattress, hunching over her own belly, trying to find breaths between fits of giggles. She hasn’t laughed so hard in years.

Morse laughs too, but mainly at her excessive reaction- bemused and shaking his head and probably thinking what he said wasn’t nearly so funny as to justify her reaction. Even when she calms down, even when they turn the lights off, she’s smiling. There’s no way of telling him why, why it’s the words ‘we’ and ‘our’ that release a breath she hadn’t even been aware she was holding.

  

 

\----

 

 

Joan gives birth on a sunny Friday afternoon in July, just after lunch.

The whole thing is easier than the last nine months have been—unspeakably painful of course, but Joan finds it’s a relief to have solid pain that people recognise as awful to complain about rather than trying to explain the indistinct, shapeless discomfort and constant aching of being pregnant. She’ll take labour any day over swollen ankles, sore boobs, and a ever-present pool of sweat that collects each day between her baby bump and the top of her groin. And that’s only the physical stuff – barely touching on all the other little inconveniences that make up the experience of pregnancy.

Even though she and Morse are in their own house now, Joan gives birth in her childhood bedroom with just her mother and the midwives by her side. If she hadn’t been otherwise occupied with birthing pains, she might have reflected on how surreal it was in itself—pushing out a baby with all her childhood toys and dolls looking on as spectators.

Her father and Morse are at work. Morse has been by her side for everything of any importance in the past nine months, they’ve barely been apart since that night she went to his flat. But ‘father’ or not, she’s told that having him at the birth is absolutely _not_ the done thing. “It might affect how he _sees_ you,” her midwife advised her sagely in an antenatal clinic, in a way that makes it obvious she’s referring to the sex life she and Morse do not have. “You wouldn’t want that, would you, m’dear.”

It’s a rhetorical question, as though her future sexual desirability is chief amongst concerns going forward. For herself, Joan can’t help but think it’d do men some good if they saw childbirth for themselves.

And she just misses Morse. She loves her mother but in many ways, she’s as worried about everything as Joan is; fluttering around the midwives to make sure everything was normal and going well. She misses his calmness, and logic and stability. It feels wrong to do this without him, somehow. But the baby doesn’t feel the same way and isn’t waiting around for anyone once the contractions start.

The whole thing passes in a painful, bizarre blur involving tears, wet flannels and Joan utterly failing all those breathing techniques she was so prodigiously taught in her ante-natal clinics. Without warning the baby is out, the cord is cut and the midwives take it away for swaddling before she even has a chance to look between her legs. They barely give Joan another glance despite the mess she’s in literally and emotionally, and she hates them with a violence she didn’t think she was capable of. As though they only suffered her to deliver a baby and now it’s separated from her they needn’t bother.

Joan tries to move, tries to look over their shoulders to see it but it all hurts too much to shift herself and her eyes just blur the room around her. The only sound is the midwives murmuring indistinctly between themselves.

“Why isn’t it crying?” Joan demands tearfully. She turns to her mother. “They’re supposed to cry-- what’s wrong with it?”

Her mother’s crying too by now but she smiles at Joan, wiping her forehead again. “Give the poor thing a chance, sweetheart—you’d have trouble saying much after being surrounded by all that fluid for nine months!”

On cue, there’s a wet, squelching sort of cry from behind the gaggle of midwives and Joan hears a sob that it takes her a second to realise came from her own mouth.  Her mother kisses her temple and pushes her sweaty hair back, Joan clings to her hand desperately tightly.

Finally, _finally_ , the midwives turn back to her with a white covered wrap in the arms of the middle one.

“You have a girl!” one says. Her mother repeats this news directly in her ear, yet even then Joan’s struggling with the concept.

Joan leans forward, wincing, to reach out for the bundle, and gives the midwife a glare when she tries to tell her how best to hold it -- hold _her_ , rather.  Joan settles the weight into both arms and on her braced knees as though she’s cradling a doll made of glass.

The baby looks nothing like Joan was picturing – for some reason she’d imagined a pink, perfectly powdered and chubby-cheeked cherub baby would pop out of her. Instead, she’s a shade of purple, her head is vaguely cone-shaped and blood-smeared, her features squashed into a tiny scrunched up face.

A single wrinkled hand is free from the cotton nest and pats Joan’s nose.

Joan falls in love.

 

 

\----

 

 

A little after five, two sets of feet pound the staircase and her father and Morse burst into the room a moment later. They must have broken more than a few speeding laws to get here so fast from the station.

“Is everything all right?” her father demands. “I told you to ring me at the station every hour, Win!”

Her mother throws her hands up. “Well, I’m sorry, but I was just a little occupied here helping these two!”

This draws their attention to Joan on the bed, new baby in her arms. She smiles nervously, first at her father then at Morse, suddenly glad her mother helped her to the bath while the midwives busied themselves stripping the ruined sheets. She’s exhausted anyway, but definitely couldn’t have faced this feeling as grimy as she did two hours ago.

Her father steps forward automatically, some indescribable emotion replacing his stoic concern and authority.

“Fred,” her mother chides with a smile, holding him back by the arm. “I think Morse ought to be the first to get a look at his _daughter_.”

“A girl,” her father chokes out, wiping under his eye but not quite managing to catch his tears. Joan has never seen him look so overcome, not even on her wedding day. He allows Morse to edge past him, and her mother puts her arms around him.

Morse kneels on the bed next to her, even now keeping a good few inches between his leg and hers. He reaches down, stroking the baby’s cheek with the back of his index finger. Joan looks up at him- she’d always been secretly worried about this moment, when the reality of another man’s baby really set in. But even in her anxious mind, there’s no way to interpret his expression as anything other than enchanted. Even better than she could have hoped.

“Mum and baby both doing well, the midwives said,” her mother tells them both proudly. “Seven pounds, four ounces—it’s a good solid weight, especially for your first.”

“Do we have a name yet?” her father asks.

Joan glances at Morse, and nods. She’s been bouncing ideas off him since that night they felt her kick. “Yes. Her name is Lillian-” she looks up at her mother “- _Winifred._ ”

Her mother puts a hand over her mouth and sobs into it. Joan reaches up for her other hand, squeezing it tightly. “Oh, Joan.”

Chosen as an apology for her months absence and a thank you for everything else, and all the other things she doesn’t have the courage to say in so many words. She hopes it’s enough.

But her father nods at her approvingly. “Lillian Winifred Morse,” he announces. Morse draws a surprised breath in next to her. It seems like part of her name ended up being a surprise to him too. Her father sniffs hard, his voice shaking. “It’s a fine name.” 

 

 

\----

 

Joan wakes up several hours after handing the baby to her father for first cuddles with Grandpa. The silence and darkness of the room that was teeming with life and emotion when she fell asleep is disorienting.

The only light comes from a lamp on in the far corner of the room, and Morse sits in the chair next to the table she used to have dolls tea parties at. There’s a bundle of pink and white in his arms that she eventually distinguishes as Lillian. He’s humming to her something Joan doesn’t recognise- if she knows him it’s the tune of an aria- and playing with her tiny fingers. She doesn’t let him know she’s awake, wouldn’t want to interrupt up the scene in front of her for the world.

He just keeps on surprising her. Joan doesn’t know how she managed to land on her feet with someone like him.

For the first time, she has faith that they’ll be all right- the three of them. 

 

 

\----

 

 

Motherhood is hard.

There's no getting away from it. The housewives in adverts in magazines, supposedly juggling everything with a perfectly coifed hairdo and glossy painted lips curved into a frozen genial smile are all dirty rotten liars. It’s a good thing she loves Lilly so much -persistently, inescapably- because otherwise, she would have definitely given up by now. Maybe gotten on a train to somewhere, met some guy who she wouldn't know was bad until much too late and let the cycle begin again.

But there's now a tiny person who wails and balls her little fists up and needs her. And somehow, that’s enough.

Joan barely sleeps for the first month, and only marginally more afterwards. It becomes a fairly common occurrence to find some kind of baby bodily fluid under her nails.

She takes it all, uncomplaining. Who is she to struggle? Women have been doing this for centuries; her own mother was left alone with two young children at her age and never once needed anything other than her children’s love to sustain her.

Her parents are amazing, helping out whenever they can with their beloved first grandchild, and Morse… well, Morse is a godsend. Takes to fatherhood like a duck to water and Lilly already seems to adore him. But still, there’s a lot of days where it’s just her and Lilly's powerful lungs filling the house while Morse is at work—  when motherhood feels as though she’s just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks to stop the baby crying for the longest amount of time.

And then sometimes, nothing works. Lilly cries so long and loud Joan can hear it ring in her ears- and even when she’s quiet, Joan is on edge, waiting for the next round. Morse’s key in the door each evening is both a relief and an embarrassment to her. All his police friends must go home to much more orderly households than he does.

“What a welcome,” Morse says wryly. He drops his keys on the side. “How long has she been like this?”

Joan wants to lie so badly. Say everything’s been just peachy till just now- God forbid Morse realise how bad a mother she is. But her lip wobbles too much, and she knows she looks too haggard to pull off an untruth.

“All day. Only let up when I fed her.”

Lilly screams, her little face red with the effort. Joan feels on the verge of tears herself. Her skin feels stretched too tightly over her bones, like her insides might pop the seams holding her together. The world seems as though it’s closing in on her, the wallpaper she picked out threatens to swallow her whole.

Joan stands by the sink, patting Lilly’s back with a shaky hand. Morse puts the kettle on like he always does after getting back from work, because this is his life now. His lips are moving yet Joan can’t seem to focus on the words. His presence suddenly offends her more than anything.

Him, in this house they bought, leading this life. Why he chooses to come home to a screeching baby and an awful mother every night when he could be doing anything he wanted, with anyone he wanted.

“Why d’you marry me, Morse?”

“What?”

“I want to know why you married me.” Her voice is clearer than she expected it would be, slow and deliberate. “Because... I think about it all the time and the more I do, the less I understand. And I just realise sometimes… I don't understand you at all.”

“Joan-… what's this about?”

“I get that you pitied me, I understand that bit. Sympathy is one thing, but this… trapping yourself with me in sham marriage and a baby that isn't yours is another. Pity doesn't stretch that far. And don't tell me it was out of the goodness of your heart—nobody is that good of a person, Morse, not even you.”

He doesn't answer. He just looks at her, guarded and possibly a little hurt. On some level she knows she should stop-  before her nice, cushy life she’s had the good luck to fall into goes up in smoke once again.

“It was never your mess, until you made it that way. You could have backed out- you proposed on the spur of the moment because I was such a pathetic mess that night, I get it, but you could have stopped this. God, you should have done. You could have found someone else, who actually deserves you-” Morse laughs without humour. “Why didn't you? Was it –because of my dad? Did you marry me so you wouldn’t disappoint him?”

Morse is plainly annoyed. The perverse part of her that opened this particular can of worms of her revels in it. “No, it was nothing to do with that.”

“Oh, so there _is_ a reason then!” Joan goads. Blood pounds through her and she feels alive in a sick sort of way. “Then _what_? For god’s sake, just tell me!”

“I asked you to marry me because I love you. I married you because I love you. I’m still here because I love you!”

Joan stares.

She understands his words. She’s heard it before: from Ray, who probably meant it by his own twisted definition; from over eager boys she dated who didn’t even understand that they didn’t mean it. She knows what it means, in theory.

Coming from him it might as well be pig-Latin.

“I- I don't believe you.”

He opens his mouth as if to argue with her. But all the fight drains out of him abruptly, and somehow it’s the most upsetting part of all of this. He looks… drained. Defeated, even.

“No,” he murmurs. She barely hears him over Lilly, whose presence seems to rush back into the room now the heat of the fight is over. “I don't suppose you do.”

Joan doesn’t know where they go from here. And apparently, neither does he. Lilly hiccoughs and wails again, and Joan senses they’re both grateful for the distraction. Morse steps towards them, slowly, but won’t look at her.

“Here, let me take her.” Joan hands Lilly over to him wordlessly. Lilly seems to settle more than she has all day, distracted by Morse’s tie.“I’ll take her to your parents for a few hours.”

“Okay,” Joan whispers, numbly.

Morse stands close to her, head bowed and still not able to look her in the eye. “Try to get some sleep. Please.”

He says it pleadingly, as though it’s deliberate intransigence on her part that she can’t remember the last time she slept for more than three hours. He lays a gentle hand on her arm, where she used to have bruises from another man’s hands, and leans down to kiss her forehead. Joan lets her tired eyes drift shut. Too soon though, it’s over and he’s gone. Leaving her alone in a house that immediately seems much too big without him and the baby.

The kettle whistles on the stove.

She does as he asks and gets into bed. Bone-tired as she is, sleep doesn’t come for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a serious note, I realised whilst I was writing the last part of this story that I was writing Joan with some of the symptoms of post-partum depression. It isn't within the scope of this story to explore this, not because it it isn't important but because I don't think I'm talented enough as a writer to do it justice- especially within the context of when this is set and the lack of awareness and appreciation of the condition in 1960s Britain. It's a cop out maybe, but that's how I feel. But just know it isn't being ignored out of ignorance or dismissal of its seriousness.
> 
> Please please let me know if you enjoyed this- I have agonised over and tweaked and rehashed these scenes for months now so any appreciation would make it all worth it!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well here we are at last! all i can say is that i hope this is worth the wait i put you through- which i apologise profusely for
> 
> i hope you enjoy the happy ending morse and joan are _not_ getting in the show!

Joan wakes up to the stream of sunlight through the gap in the curtains. The bed beside her is empty and her limbs feel like lead. The clock on the bedside table tells her she’s been asleep almost fifteen hours which is about the only thing that makes sense to her right now.

Her outburst of the previous evening feels far away—like she’s watching a stranger douse her whole life in petrol and toss a flame into it.

Heavy headed and still half asleep, she pads into the baby’s room to find Lilly awake but gurgling away quite happily in her cot.

At least Morse had the decency to bring the baby back before he walked out for good. Lilly will miss him-- who else has a way with her that leaves her as happy as she seems now?

The thought is mild, strangely detached.

She almost misses it before she leaves: a note folded and hanging over the bar of the crib.

_I’ve fed and changed her. I will be at work until late tonight – don’t wait up. - Morse_

Joan reads it several times, trying to work out what to make of it. Whether it’s just a little too convenient that he’s working late after whatever it is that happened last night. Still, it implies he’s supposedly planning to return at some point which is probably more than she should expect at this point.

Joan doesn’t get dressed for the rest of the day, just sits downstairs on the couch with the baby in her Moses basket next to her. She has a book in one hand and the silkiest of Morse’s ties in the other, holding it over Lilly and letting her entertain herself with it. Apparently that’s all it takes- Lilly only threatens to cry twice for the rest of the day: out of a demand for her feed, and when Joan tries to take it back when she appeared to be falling asleep.

Joan eats alone at the dining room table after Lilly is fed and settled down for the night with Morse’s tie attached to the mobile above her crib.

It’s funny what can change in a day. The poles have reversed - she’s very small in a vast, open space that she might just drown in.

She’s been tossing and turning in bed for at least an hour when she hears the front door open. Her stomach clenches. Morse goes into Lilly’s room first, murmuring something to her that Joan can’t make out. His footsteps approach their bedroom. He locks eyes with her in the darkness and it makes him hesitate in the doorway before entering.

Joan doesn’t dare move. He sits on the bed for a long time without moving. It’s so quiet and still she hears him breathe in and out behind her.

“Morse.”  Her voice is quiet. It feels easier to say it with her back turned. He doesn’t answer. “I’m sorry. About last night. I shouldn’t have said those things. It was just- I was just exhausted and the baby was crying all day, but I shouldn't have taken it out on you and I-”

“This was never the way I wanted it to happen,” he interrupts. When he pauses, Joan tenses up – something about this moment feels important, portentous. She knows somehow that it will change all that comes after it. “Maybe if I’d realised sooner, or stopped you leaving that day after the bank. It would have been different. Not better necessarily, just less… complicated. When you came to my flat that night, with your face like that… yes, I wanted to help you, but it wasn’t because I pitied you but because you deserved - _deserve_ \- better than what he left you with, what he did to you. I know you don’t believe that, but it’s true. And I wanted to be the one to give it to you, even if you never felt the same way. I don’t know if I even thought as far as you saying yes, definitely not as far as all this- the wedding, Lilly. I just… wanted better for you.”

Tears prick her eyes. She has to swallow hard to stop them falling.

“And despite what you think,” he continues. “I’ve never regretted it. Not once.”

Her heart thrums so hard she can hear it in her ears. She can’t doubt him, not when he sounds like that: so soft and sincere. She wants to, but she can’t.

He loves her.

A police siren wails somewhere in the distance and pierces the endless gulf of silence between them. Joan sits up slowly, slipping out of bed. Her steps are unsure walking around their bed -the bed they’ve share in all ways but one until now- but her mind is not.

“Morse…”

No answer. She tries again: “Morse.”

She steps to within a foot of him. He doesn’t move, chin cast down.

“ _Endeavour_.”

That makes him look. She hasn’t called him that before or since their wedding vows. His face is impassive, eyes intense on hers. She raises her hands -slowly, like he’s a sparrow that might fly off with a single sudden movement- and pushes the straps of her nightdress off her shoulders. It puddles at her feet.

His breath hitches and she hears it. The muscles in her arms tense with the desire to cover herself from his view but she locks them by her sides.

“Come here,” she commands softly.

Morse stands, restoring their normal height difference. His head bows to one side, searching her face – for doubt or indecision, she supposes. She knows there’s none to find. Joan smooths her hands over his shoulders, around the circle of his shirt collar. Her thumbs stroke the nape of his neck.

He leans in to touch her forehead to his, their breaths shared between them, and Joan closes the gap between their bodies. His hands pull her closer with more confidence than she was expecting.

She stands on her tip toes to meet him, soft lips to his at first, just like their wedding day. But this time she chases his lips when it seems like he’s pulling away, catches him and keeps him there. All they’ve ever done is pull away from each other at the wrong moments and she’s more than tired of it.

Even breaking apart to breathe jagged breaths, she isn’t willing to let him go far- instead moving to kiss his the underside of his jaw and the line of his throat.

When she senses he’s about to say something, Joan stops and looks up warily – intent on clipping him round the ear if he dares ask her _if she’s sure._

“I think I’m wearing too many clothes,” he finally says.

Joan laughs, quietly, breathlessly. “Too bloody right.”

 

 

\----

 

 

Joan wakes up startled the next morning and it takes her a while to place why. Nothing in her line of sight has changed from every other morning she’s woken up here, but everything is different.

Her husband’s arm drapes loosely over her bare stomach, holding her close. She feels his warm, steady breath on the junction between her neck and shoulder, and the pleasant ache and stretch in her thighs recalls the breathless hours of the night before. Her toes curl involuntarily.

She moves in increments, scared to disrupt anything in case it disappears before her like trying to grasp fog. Joan turns her head to him, tracing the relaxed lines of his face with her eyes. Morse is so close, she’d barely have to reach to do the same with her fingers, ghost her fingertips over his lips, sigh at the memory of them on her skin—

From the next room, Lilly chooses her moment to let loose her morning demands. Joan snaps her eyes shut. Normally she’s the first to go because she sleeps even more lightly than Morse does, but ever the coward, she isn’t ready to face him. All the ordinary pillow talk topics after a first night together seem... trivial, ridiculous even.

She’s slept with married men before, just never one that was married to her.

Morse stirs. His arms flex around her, burrowing so close that she feels his nose skim the side of her neck. Her heart takes a moment to remember how to beat, and even then it’s far too fast.

“I’ll go,” he murmurs, to himself, if her feigned sleep is effectively fooling him.

And she isn’t sure it is when he doesn’t move and she still senses his eyes on her. The next thing she feels are his fingers, brushing her hair from her face. He kisses the corner of her mouth – feather light and tender- and it’s surprising hard to maintain herself ‘asleep’ and to not just find his lips with hers.

Still, the bed springs release his weight and he leaves. Joan opens her eyes and breathes out, and it feels like light fills her lungs instead of air. Like all her insecurities and hang ups have been kneaded out of her, and in their place there’s just weightlessness.

His voice drifts back through the open door of their bedroom and she doesn’t have to concentrate hard to know he’s singing quietly to Lilly. Lilly loves it when he sings. Without even being there, Joan can see them: Lilly reaching up her small hand to him in his arms, trying to catch the notes as they drift from his mouth.

It’s funny, really, how things work out.

Perhaps before she was born, Joan might have given this all up if Ray came back to her on his hands and knees and begged her for a chance to raise their baby together. Joan might have fallen for those eyes again. Or maybe she might have gone back to him just for Lilly’s sake, bowing to conventional wisdom that she’d be better off with her biological father.

Neither of them would have been more loved than they are here. Of that she’s absolutely sure.

 

  

\--

 

 

Joan finds her nightdress where she left it on the floor last night, pulls her robe on and slips downstairs before he returns. It’s the setting that matters: she can’t greet him, naked in their bed, not just yet. Bizarre to term it too intimate, since she’s now the proud possessor of the knowledge of that he looks like totally wrecked making love in the wee small hours, but that’s what it is.

Everything is different, but meeting in their kitchen in the morning plugs the gap between where they were a few days ago and where they are now.

Joan listens to his footfalls upstairs while drifting nervously around the room, brushing imaginary crumbs from the counter into her hand and throwing them away. Her hands clench and unclench around the seat backs at the table as the loose floorboard at the top of the stairs creaks.

“Good morning!” she offers breezily.

He nods, looking up and down quickly at her, and puts Lilly in her high chair. Lilly takes her (thankfully empty) plastic plate in her chubby hands and bashes it joyfully on her table.

He smiles a tight, nervous smile. “Morning.”

Their kitchen is a good size considering what they paid, but she discovers it’s actually far too small for the three of them when she and Morse are acting like it’s the height of bad manners to be within a six foot radius of each other. She keeps finding herself in his way trying to organise hers and Lilly’s breakfasts--they step the same way twice and spend a good minute apologising to one another. They’re trapped in a slapstick scene.

“I’ll be off to work, then,” Morse announces, as though she expected him to be going anywhere else at quarter past seven on a week day morning. He still has a half eaten slice of jammy toast in his hand. He kisses Lilly on the top of her head as he passes, absentmindedly.

“Right, yeah,” she says, nodding. “I’ll see you… later?”

“Yes. Sometime after five, probably. Earlier, if I can get away.”

“Right.”

His hand is on the door knob. She half-expects him to declare that fact out loud as well, since they’re playing a game of State The Obvious this morning.

“Catch some criminals for me, then,” she says. It’s among the stupidest things she’s ever said in her life but Morse smiles.

“I’ll try my best.”

He opens the door. Joan frowns. Something is wrong. Something important.

“Morse?”

He turns back. The question in his eyes is almost formed on his lips, when she pulls him down by his tie and kisses him. The door clicks shut behind him again, both of his hands pulling her closer by her waist. She licks into his mouth and letting her free hand stray into his hair, carding her fingers through it.

She pulls away, reluctantly, breathlessly. He gazes at her, his mouth slick and open slightly.

“Have a good day,” Joan says. It’s a struggle to catch her breath.

Joan notes with some pride that unflappable Morse is clearly flapped. She watches him with a faint smile, while he struggles awkwardly with his key in the door and his near-collapse out the door when he finally manages it. He throws her a nervous backward glance and a smile that makes her knees weak. 

 

 

\--

 

 

The carriage clock in the dining room of her parents house has a heavy brass pendulum, suspended under the clock face.

When she was small, she thought if she held it in her hand and stopped the swing, she could stop time itself. She and Sam played many a make-believe game based on this very premise—until her father caught her and told her not to fiddle with it or the cost of repairing it would come out of her pocket money.

Joan watches it now, her eyes following its movements as though entranced.  Stopping time, stopping everything right where she is, is an appealing thought.

“-… Joan, are you listening?”

“Hmm?”

“I was saying, Sam is home for Christmas on the twenty-second- I thought we might all chip in for a welcome home gift, aside from just his Christmas presents. What do you think?”

“Sounds good to me,” Joan says, distantly. She looks over at Lilly, entertaining herself with colourful wooden alphabet blocks and not crying. For the time being, at least. She should have brought Morse’s tie with her.

“Is everything all right?” her mother asks, apropos of nothing. “With you and Morse, I mean.”

Joan’s tea cup clatters into the saucer. Her cheeks heat, thinking of last night. Kissing him this morning. Surely it can’t be that obvious? “Why do you ask?”

“He was here a couple of days ago- with Lilly and without you and seemed, well, _distracted_ all evening. Not that he said why, mind you. And now you’re here and you look like you’re away with the fairies too. Tell me it’s none of my business but….”

“Everything is good.” Even Joan isn’t convinced. Her mother eyes her and Joan searches for the words to explain. “We’ve been… adjusting, recently. Things will be better from here, though, I think.”

“And what about you?”

“What about me?”

“How are you doing?”

Joan concertinas the lace trim on the table cloth between her fingers. Her mother is Concerned with a capital _C_ , like the brick Lilly is trying to eat a few feet away. Joan can hear it in her voice and it sets her guard up. Concern is only a few steps away from pity, and pity is her mother thinking she isn’t capable, that she’s failing.

“Did Morse say something to you?” 

Her mother sighs, reaching out to cover Joan’s hand with hers. “He didn’t have to. Me and your dad do have eyes, you know. We worry about you.”

“And?”

Her mother raises her eyebrows at her prickly tone but chooses to ignore it. “Being a mother is hard work, Joan. Don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. Lord knows there were times when I thought I was losing my mind when you and Sam were small, when all I wanted was to ignore you both and sleep for a week because I was just so tired. Your dad was at work during the day and I was on my own with you, wondering why I wasn’t finding it easy like we women are ‘supposed’ to, like every other mother I’d seen. And all the guilt I had that you and Sam were stuck with me, because I loved you both so much and you deserved so much better than I felt like I was giving you.”

Her mother squeezes her hand.

“Does any of that sound familiar?” her mother asks gently. Joan’s throat is too thick to say anything. “You don’t have to say it, sweetheart. Just remember… you aren’t a bad mum if you can’t do it all yourself, or if you need to ask for help. Think about it.”

In Joan’s peripheral vision, Lilly drops her green _K_ brick and it bounces across the floor, and her little face crumples. As hard as life with a very changeable baby has been, it has also equipped Joan with an almost infallible sense for when said baby is about to start crying: she’s across the room and scooping her up almost before the first tear escapes.

It’s the first time Joan’s ever been grateful to change her nappy. When she has some distance from her mother’s gentle understanding, Joan knows she’ll appreciate it but in the moment, it’s cloying and makes her want to just curl up and cry herself.

There’s nothing quite like a shitty nappy to bring you back to reality, after all.

When she returns to the dining room with Lilly freshly changed, her mother returns to the subject of Sam’s homecoming and whether they might organise a small surprise party for him with some of his old friends from school. Joan advises against it.

She thinks of returning from Leamington, who alienating it felt to be around her friends from an old life and wonders if Sam might feel the same. To adjust to change with an audience. Being pressured to make small talk with them out of the blue wasn’t likely to help.

The biting late November wind pinches her cheeks when she stands on the doorstep later, about to head home with her baby on her hip. Joan turns back to her mother, letting herself be pulled into a long half-hug.

“Mum?” she asks hesitantly, into her mother’s laundry powder-scented floral shirt.

“Yes?”

Joan looks at her feet when she pulls back, at her boots on the worn doormat.

“Could you- babysit for Lilly for a day, maybe once a week? I know you have her some afternoons but, I just think- it’d be nice to have a day to myself, you know… regularly.”

Her mother smiles, and it’s almost conspiratorial- like she knows her motherly advice earlier has sunk in. “Of course I can. Tell you what, we’ll have her overnight for a night a week as well, how about that?”

“No, no, I couldn’t ask you to do that, Mum. Dad’ll go spare listening to her cry all night.”

“Yes, you can and you will. Your dad didn’t do nearly enough night-feeds and nappy changes when you and Sam were babies- it’ll be good for him.” Her mother is a saint. Her mother will be called to the front of the queue for the Pearly Gates by St. Peter himself. “How about we say Fridays from now on? That way he can’t complain that he has to get up for work the next morning.”

“Okay,” Joan agrees uncertainly. It’s hard to feel like she isn’t taking advantage somehow, or shirking her duty as a mother. “If you’re sure.”

Her mother smiles encouragingly and nods. The expression is almost a still image taken from a film reel of moments in Joan’s whole life: when she hesitantly read out loud herself from a school book looking to her mother for approval while she did the ironing; going to school the day after Jimmy Williams was responsible for her first broken heart and she spent the previous night crying in her mother’s arms. When her first contractions started giving birth to her daughter.

Maybe this is one of those times, and she actually does need that help again.

Joan hugs her again, as tightly as she can without squashing Lilly. “Thank you, mum,” Joan says, wishing there were a more powerful way to express it. “Thank you.”

 

 

\--

 

 

“Morse, are you sure you’ve thought this through?”

“…Yes?”

“That was the least certain ‘yes’ I’ve ever heard in my life.”

“It’ll be fine.”

“I don’t think it’s going to fit!” Joan sings lightly, grinning, with Lilly on her hip.  She’s watching Morse wrestle a seven foot Christmas tree in a heavy wooden barrel through the kitchen into their front room, leaving a trail of pine tree needles in his wake.

“It’ll fit,” Morse says between gritted teeth, pulling the barrel with him with a face full of tree branches. “I’ll make it fit!”

Joan follows him into the hall. “You’re going to raise our ceiling by three inches through sheer force of will, are you?”

“If necessary.”

Joan just snorts. With no small amount of effort, he hauls the tree into its newly designated space and straightens to examine his work.

Whether it fits or not depends on the definition of the word. It isn’t too big for the room altogether, but the very top branch is bent almost horizontal by the ceiling. Meaning their angel topper will be gesticulating at the sofa that Lilly has peed on more than once rather than in supplication to the heavens.

“See,” Morse says, red-faced. “It’s fine.”

He’s been so enthusiastic about their Christmas, and Joan is bemused by it. Joan isn’t bothered either way and hadn’t expected him to be, other than for Lilly’s sake— to add some colour to the photo albums she’s compiling of her first year. But Morse wants the whole nine yards: the lights, the tinsel, the _SANTA STOP HERE_ sign he’s stuck into the patch of grass at the front of the house. He tries to seem unbothered, she can still see how much it matters to him, even if she isn’t sure exactly why.

So she lets him have it. Lets him spend a ridiculous amount on decorations and toys for Lilly that she’ll probably play with for a few days then go back to stroking Morse’s silky tie- now willing sacrificed and cut and sewn into a third of it’s original length so she can’t strangle herself with it. They’ll be at her parents for Christmas lunch, but Joan’s attempting to cook for Christmas Eve and Morse already has the meats and vegetables and trimmings all on order with military efficiency.

Joan just loves to see him happy.

“All right then, Capability Brown,” Joan quips, putting Lilly in her rocker on the rug. “What’s next?”

No sooner has her backside hit the couch behind her than Morse is in front of her, pulling her back up by her hands. “No, no, no,” he says. “You’re not getting out of decorating that easily- I’m not winding two types of lights around that tree by myself.”

“Who was the one who insisted on _buying_ both because he couldn’t choose between them?” Their bodies are close: plaid of her dress brushing against his cotton shirt, her feet planted between his. “Anyway, my view’d be much better from the settee.”

Morse smiles down at her. His eyes are all soft- she loves it when he looks like that and how it’s only ever around her. “View of what?”

“You,” Joan says, unapologetic. “Getting all hot and bothered trying to wrestle two sets of lights around that ridiculous Christmas tree.”

Morse shakes his head, smirking with a faint blush. She’s grateful she still has the power to embarrass him: they’ve gained so much from the month they’ve been together, really together, but she’d have missed teasing him if that’d had gone with their pretence of being legally-married-but-just-friends raising a baby together.

Last month, Joan told her mother that things would be better between them from then on. She’s glad time hasn’t made a liar out of her.

Maybe it’s what it would have been like if they’d had better timing before Leamington- just with wedding rings and nappy changes and night feeds. Or maybe they can never get that back, those missed opportunities and false starts, but maybe that’s okay too.

Joan loves night time now. Sometimes they have sex, but more often he just holds her and she almost likes that more. The feeling of his heartbeat against her spine, an arm around her shoulders and legs tucked into hers. After everything, after knowing the secrets he’s kept for her – sometimes at his own personal loss- everything he does and continues to do for her and their daughter… there’s nowhere safer in the world.

And she loves him for all of it.

A half hysterical laugh bubbles in her throat. She loves her husband. She’s in love with her husband. And he loves her, and her -their- child.

There can’t have been many other marriages in history where that thought came as such a shock and with so much internal fanfare.

Morse thinks she’s laughing at him, rolls his eyes, and tilts her chin up between his thumb and forefinger and kisses her.

“I hope you remembered to buy some mistletoe among all that Christmas stuff,” Joan murmurs, crossing her arms around the back of his neck and drawing herself up to him.

“In our bedroom.”

“Knew I married you for a reason.”

Morse laughs, full-bodied and joyful, at a joke she’d never had risked just a month before—the circumstances of their marriage being so taboo. There’s an overwhelming sense of being free that comes with being able to behave so loosely with him, to have her marriage not be something she feels she has to defend and perform to other people, because now it’s as real as any other.

It’s real. She kisses him again with that thought in mind, two types of Christmas lights momentarily forgotten.

 

 

 

\--

  

 

Christmas is a noisy affair.  There’s barely a moment to catch her breath for being in one place or another, barely time to sit down and take stock of much other than the next task on her to-do list.

The Morse-Thursday clan remain at the table after the special occasion china is wiped almost completely clean in front of them, Christmas lunch over for another year. Her father and Morse are quite openly breaking her mother’s imposed ‘no shop talk’ rule, engrossed in a conversation about some crime or another that Joan only hears scraps of but quite frankly doesn’t want to hear more about anyway. Especially not just after stuffing her face with her mother’s turkey.

Sam is home for the first time since the wedding, his niece on his lap and reaching up to pinch his nose in her chubby fist.  They’ve known each other less than a week and Joan can already tell he’ll be the one teaching Lilly cuss words and leading her astray when she gets older—but then, in truth she’d expect nothing less. Her mother sits with Sam, trying to hold a conversation which is pretty hard with Lilly’s constant wriggling shenanigans, making them both giggle.

Joan isn’t actively involved in either conversation, but there’s no feeling of isolation. Quite the opposite in fact—she’s not even sure what that would be, exactly, but she feels it. She leans into Morse, resting her head in the crook of his neck.

Morse inclines his head, looking her in the eyes with a brief questioning look. Joan smiles at him, reaching up to wipe some gravy from his face with her thumb. He smiles back automatically and his arm leaves the back of her chair and rests on her shoulder instead, keeping her close. He can look at her like that and all that’ll go through her head for a good minute or two will be _he loves me he loves he loves me._ And it still shocks her.

There's no one in this room that doesn't love her. There had been times that had been true before now she's sure, but it hadn't felt like enough then.

Now, Joan breathes in. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> END NOTES:
> 
> [1] first things first, thank you thank you thank you all so much for sticking with me for all of this! i know it’s been a long time since this fic started and I never imagined it’d take me this long to actually finish it but I am genuinely so thrilled how people have responded to this! And for the record, my commitment to this story has never wavered, I was always planning to finish it and always working on it either in my head or sometimes just adding a few words or a sentence at a time—only my motivation and occasionally inspiration deserted me and that’s what’s caused the hold up. It’s been a weird and busy few months for me but this story was always on my mind, believe me. I’m satisfied with the ending and I can only hope you guys think it was all worth it in the end- your comments throughout really kept me writing and drove me onwards
> 
> [2] An early, early conception of this story had Ray coming back to make trouble for the Morses. But in the end, I decided it’s much more satisfying for you and for me if I just tell you that in this universe, he died off-screen in a horrifically slow and painful way, his wife collected on his life insurance policy and moved abroad to live the life of her dreams, and nobody went to Ray’s funeral or even really noticed he was gone. The end.
> 
> [3] The talk between Joan and Win in this chapter came directly out of my concerns about and your responses to the last chapter- I decided it was important to show Joan accepting the help of other people so I sort of engineered that scene for the purpose of that-- but I do think it adds extra shades to the Win/Joan relationship that unintentionally became a theme of this whole piece. 
> 
> [4] Again, I am so sorry I made you wait so long for this- I hope the ending makes up for it somewhat! Please, please let me know what you think- seeing how other people interpret what’s being playing out in my head for months is such a delight for me. 
> 
> Thank you all again- it’s been real y’all!


End file.
